British Met in disgrace

“Never has the Met Office had more scientists and computing power at its disposal — yet never has it seemed so baffled by the British weather.”

A devastating critique of climate science through the dishonest and feet dragging British Met Office has been made by Rupert Darwall, the author of The Age of Global Warming – A History.

He covers the deceit and cover-up of what he concludes is the largest case of public misfeasance in British history. It is still astonishing to me that, confronted with this sort of evidence of political conniving and plain wrong predictions from senior figures in a supposedly reputable scientific body, people still do not believe that something is seriously amiss in the whole shoddy business.

It is sobering to realise that in Britain alone, the cost of this deceit is costing the British taxpayer a sum approaching half a trillion pounds.

Only this week has Britain had a small taste of the kind of temperatures the Met Office has been promising for over a decade. In September 2008, it forecast a trend of mild winters: the following winter turned out to be the coldest for a decade.

But there is no paradox. It is precisely the power of this technology in harnessing climate scientists’ assumptions about global warming that has scuppered the Met Office’s predictions — and made it a propagandist for global warming alarmism.

The obfuscations …

Last November, the Labour peer Lord Donoughue tabled a written question asking whether the government considered the 0.8˚C rise in the average global temperature since 1880 to be ‘statistically significant’. Yes, came the reply. Douglas J. Keenan, a mathematician and former quant trader for Morgan Stanley, knew the answer was false. With Keenan’s help, Donoughue tabled a follow-up question. The Met Office refused to answer it, not once, but five times. Its refusal to clarify its stance left the energy minister, Baroness Verma, in an awkward position. Only then did it confirm that it had no basis for the claim.

The Met Office’s record of obstruction and denial should give pause to even the firmest believer in global warming and illustrates the profound incompatibility of state science (which climate science has become) and the real thing.